Lee Pace could be the statuesque poster man of hotmaxxing. At 6’5” with an aquiline nose, sandy shoulder-length hair, and a rigorous exercise routine, the actor could wear tech pants and a Patagonia puffer and still look like a gladiator. But as he’s embarked on press duties for Edgar Wright’s upcoming action-thriller The Running Man (in which he stars alongside Glen Powell and Josh Brolin), Pace and his stylist, Michael Fisher, have been leaning into his natural allure in a way that feels both primed for thirst traps and also breezily casual.
Last week, the Running Man crew hit the 2025 New York Comic Con festival. For the occasion, Pace employed his go-to, subtly slutty style trick—a sheer top—to great avail, incorporating a filmy tech jacket from the British label J.L-A.L that, at a quick glance, could have possibly doubled as a post-apocalyptic running outfit. With a pair of roomy, leathery Sacai pleated trousers and Dr. Martens lace-ups, he layered the diaphanous jacket over a simple Cotton Citizen white T-shirt. The overall vibe was cool, utilitarian, and reminiscent of Eckhaus Latta’s recent runway, in which models donned layers upon layers of sheer tops, but Lee also reminded us of its sultriness in a close-up selfie on Instagram.
Later on, Pace deployed another multipurpose outfit (an ensemble that looks like it could straddle multiple activities—perhaps the gym, or a rave, or a low-key press obligation) that reflected the actor’s coolly mega-booked schedule. Speaking on another NYCC panel, wore a white, almost cabana-ready white shirt by Oshin Studios with olive Arc’teryx sneakers and a showstopping poppy-red leather jacket. Think beachside happy hour meets “Thriller.”
In The Running Man (a redux of the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name), Pace plays Evan McCone, a masked assassin tasked with hunting down Powell’s character on a live-streamed life-or-death game show not unlike the one portrayed in the hit Netflix series Squid Game. Though it feels like a sin to cover up that face, on the Comic Con red carpet, Pace’s description of his approach sounded a lot like that of an ancient gladiator: grand entrances, show-boating, and thought-out crowd pleasers.
“I think about it as a performative masculinity in a way,” Pace told the pop-culture blog The Mary Sue of his haughty-yet-masked character. “[McCone] makes an entrance because he knows the cameras are on him… He’s like the star of the show.”
A skill, it seems, he’s had very little trouble refining.
